Jesuit priest expelled from Syria
God does not rejoice "in the destruction of the living,” the Book of Wisdom assures us this Sunday. An Italian Jesuit priest in Syria who condemned government abuses of human rights . . .
God “did not make death" nor rejoices "in the destruction of the living,” this Sunday’s reading from the Book of Wisdom assures us. An Italian Jesuit priest in Syria who condemned government abuses of human rights and opened a monastery to mourners of an opposition filmmaker killed by government troops found himself served with “a one-way visa out” of Syria last Saturday.
Young filmmaker Bassel Shahad, a member of the political opposition, was killed in late May, but when friends arrived at St. Cyril’s Church in Damascus for a prayer service in his memory, they found the doors barred. Government thugs dragged some mourners off to jail and chased away the rest.
The leadership of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church did not intervene, activists said, but Father Paolo Dall’Oglio, S.J. invited the mourners to pray at Deir Mar Musa, an ancient desert monastery he had renovated. “Nobody was allowing them to pray for their lost friend,” he said in Beirut after his expulsion, noting that both Muslims and Christians attended.
His offer was the last straw for the Syrian government, which had been seeking to expel Dall’Oglio since last year. When he departed last Saturday, he left behind the monastery he had rebuilt and reinvented over the last 30 years into a center for interfaith dialogue.
The government of President Bashar al-Assad, dominated by his own minority Alawite sect, has long presented itself as the guardian of Syrian minorities and pluralism. But that is a mirage, opponents said, with minorities cherished only if they kowtow to the authorities.
Young filmmaker Bassel Shahad, a member of the political opposition, was killed in late May, but when friends arrived at St. Cyril’s Church in Damascus for a prayer service in his memory, they found the doors barred. Government thugs dragged some mourners off to jail and chased away the rest.
The leadership of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church did not intervene, activists said, but Father Paolo Dall’Oglio, S.J. invited the mourners to pray at Deir Mar Musa, an ancient desert monastery he had renovated. “Nobody was allowing them to pray for their lost friend,” he said in Beirut after his expulsion, noting that both Muslims and Christians attended.
His offer was the last straw for the Syrian government, which had been seeking to expel Dall’Oglio since last year. When he departed last Saturday, he left behind the monastery he had rebuilt and reinvented over the last 30 years into a center for interfaith dialogue.
The government of President Bashar al-Assad, dominated by his own minority Alawite sect, has long presented itself as the guardian of Syrian minorities and pluralism. But that is a mirage, opponents said, with minorities cherished only if they kowtow to the authorities.
Source: An article by Neil MacFarquhar for the New York Times